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Microsoft announces the "ever on" Xbox One, and a week later we hear about PRISM. This should concern people far more than it seems to.
Boxing not so clever
Given the recent confirmation in the Washington Post of the existence of PRISM - an active collaboration between several major US internet coprporate bodies and America's shadowy NSA - you would think there were greater concerns about Microsoft's announcement of the Xbox One than microtransactions, or whether or not second-hand games will be playable. The NSA is - according to received wisdom - prohibited, legally, from targetting US citizens and US territories, this can mean only one thing: they're actively using the fact that a huge proportion of Internet traffic from elsewhere arrives in or passes through the US to snoop on the rest of the world. The cheeky fuckers are targetting - amongst the billions - us in the UK! More worrying still is that the UK's surveillance agencies have no similar prohibition stopping them targetting UK citizens or using information gathered by means which would otherwise, had it been obtained in the UK, require a warrant. And Microsoft are providing them with the potential perfect tool for the job.
The situation in Britain particularly is already worse than most parts of the world, as regards monitored CCTV covering public spaces. The UK is reported as having the highest density of public CCTV per capita in the world, even after the absolute number of cameras was revised downward in more recent times. Even so, we would not allow foreign (or domestic) governments to stick CCTV cameras in the corner of our living room or bedroom, and yet this is effectively what is happening when the new "permanently powered and calling home at least once every 24 hours" Xbox hits homes.
I'm not suggesting that from day one we will all be blanketed in ever present surveilance of our private lives. (I won't because I have no intention of ever owning such a monstrosity, but I digress.) What bothers me is that by creating the technological infrastructure, and training people to forget about the ever-present box we are creating a situation where the dystopian dictatorships of fictions such as "1984" or "V for Vendetta" become ever closer possibilities. Once you have such an intelligent device, which you already know is actively monitoring your participation in its environment (one of the supposed selling points of the Xbox 1); once you get used to it always being there doing its thing and being controlled remotely with your consent, it is only a short step away from it being abused to record full targetted surveillance. We are actively engaging - as a society - in erecting an infrastructure that in the future could very easily be covertly subverted.
There's always the argument that "our governments would never use the information for anything but good". Well that may be true of the governments we have now (although I have my doubts that they are entirely squeaky clean even now), but what of 10, 25, 50 years down the line? Take - for example - Zimbabwe's rapid descent from democracy in 1980 to the oppressive dictatorship now 33 years later. Now think just how much WORSE that oppression would be if Mugabe had had at his disposal the tools we are providing for future governments right now.
I am not paranoid. I do not think that "they" are out to "get" me. I very much doubt "they" even know I exist. I am, however, worried that we are sliding all to easily and with too little forethought into a situation which would make it easy for those who would curb our freedoms if they really tried. The problem is that whilst in amongst us all are people the authorities are interested in for all the right reasons, there are also those who will inevitably attract it for the wrong reasons - just standing up for themselves against vested interests. And remember who were the first of the club members to fall in line, in September 2007? The ubiquitous Microsoft.
Still thinking of giving an Xbox One house space?
